


Every Bad Boy Loves a Sailor

by Vulgarweed



Series: The Bone Fiddle [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Anal Sex, Anonymous Sex, Appalachia, Barebacking, Bedtime Stories, Cruising, Dirty Talk, Historical - 1960s, Historical - 1970s, Hustling, Lazy Mornings, M/M, New York City, Oral Sex, Past Sex Work, Past Threeway, Period-Typical Homophobic Language, Period-Typical Risky Sex, Promiscuity, Prostitution, Riding, Rimming, Sex Instructor Sherlock, mild jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 06:39:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10714215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: Bone Fiddle-verse, Appalachian AU. On a lazy, rainy Sunday morning, Sherlock tells John a smutty and (mostly) true story. John's got some mixed feelings about Sherlock's promiscuous past, but he can't deny what hearing about it in lascivious detail does to him - especially now that he's the only one safely naked in bed with him.ForShabet, akaredmageshabetin the 2017 Fandom Trumps Hate Auction. Thank you so much for your generous donation to the Anti-Defamation League!Massive thanks to my beta-readersalexxphoenix42,iwantthatcoatandPersian_Slipper (Luthe).





	Every Bad Boy Loves a Sailor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shabet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shabet/gifts).



Rain pattered the windows of the old farmhouse’s west bedroom, and there was no other sound. For that, John Watson was grateful. Nothing from the telephone, nothing from the walkie-talkie or CB radio calling him out for the rescue squad this restful gray Sunday morning. Hadn’t been for several days, in fact. It was as if something was conspiring to give them all a break after what they’d gone through with that camper-and-coal-train collision last week.

John wasn’t a church-going man anymore, except once in a while to put in some appearances or help Mrs. Hudson carry all her pie and casserole plates for her Methodist luncheons. This Sunday there was no reason to get out of bed whatsoever, and one great big reason to stay in it. Great big? Well, about 6 foot, about 165 pounds, about 7 inches. Big enough. Snuffling and wriggling. And not usually still with John in their bed at this hour. 

If John had been a church-going man still, he might have wanted to put in a prayer of thanks, and yet he thought it might be awkward, as he’d always been told God wasn’t a big fan of the thing he was most grateful for. “Thank you Lord for the handsome and brilliant man who might not even know that sometimes he humps me like a dog in his sleep. Thank you for his amazing weird brain that somehow has room for 237 kinds of tobacco spit, at least 161 obscure old mountain fiddle tunes, 38 ways to kill with his bare hands, and at least 12 different ways to make a man come in less than five minutes with just his tongue and an old-fashioned pepper-mill handle. He’s a stuck-up asshole for sure, but I can’t even say that about him without thinking about being stuck up his asshole. Or him being stuck up mine. He taught me that both ways feel great and I’m grateful for that. Thank you for the rare lazy morning sex he and I are about to have really soon, I hope. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

That wouldn’t wash. John giggled in his feigned sleep.

Sherlock turned over next to him and spooned up behind him. “Having a private joke with yourself, John?” he murmured drowsily into John’s neck. “You do all sorts of ridiculous things in your sleep, but laughing is unusual.”

“Not asleep,” John muttered into his pillow, not quite ready to turn around in Sherlock’s embrace just yet. The feeling of that warm skin and leaning weight all along his back, and rear, and legs was heavenly enough for right now. John allowed himself a languid squirm, figuring that his own brain might not be genius level, but his ass was pretty damn good at deducing Sherlock’s level of morning wood. Definitely hardwood now, no soft pine or droopy weeping willow there. Oak at least, if not hickory. And that thought wasn’t helping with the giggling.

But his giggling turned to a pleased sort of gasp as Sherlock’s firm and eager cock nudged at the lower curves of John’s ass, and insinuated itself into that tight little gap between and beneath. When John lightly clenched his thigh muscles to give it a friendly squeeze, he felt more than heard the deep sound Sherlock made. “Is this what woke you up?” John muttered, still smiling into the pillow. “Just can’t sleep past Ass O’Clock?”

“Absence of sound from your own personal CB radio, even low ambient static,” Sherlock said quietly, giving his hips a tiny teasing roll, just enough to make sure that his cock made glancing contact with the sensitive back and underside of John’s balls, “suggested that you had been ordered to keep it off by someone more established at the rescue squad, most likely someone who worries that you had been overworking yourself. There was a span last week when I’d hardly seen you for twenty-four hours - and yes, for once I was paying attention.”

John was now struggling to decide between squirming down lower into the mattress, spreading out and letting Sherlock crawl over him, or turning over and meeting him straight-on front to front, mouth to mouth and cock to cock. As tough choices went, he had to think it was a win-win, really. “And you haven’t gotten hit up for a case lately . . . so you just want to…” Sherlock’s hand making a long, slow, warm trail up the back of John’s leg, pausing to slide back up and down favorite angles of muscle, felt so good. John leaned his lower half into it, sliding his own hand back to ride Sherlock’s wrist a little and guide the caresses. 

John allowed it for long, languid minutes, gasping and biting his lip as his cock swelled so hard and fast when Sherlock grabbed his left asscheek roughly, shaking it a little, before returning to slow strokes that now felt more teasing than tender. John figured they probably ought to have a talk about the rescue squad one of these days, but he wasn’t about to interrupt some USDA Grade-A foreplay to do it, not when there was still so much to be had out of an amorous Sherlock. John moaned and turned half-over, let Sherlock’s roaming hand move up and down his inner thighs. “Mmm, you’re good at that, Sherlock,” he said dreamily, licking his lips and arching his back.

“I’m good at what?” Sherlock asked right into John’s ear, maybe a tiny bit too eagerly.

“Sex,” John said bluntly, sliding a hand up Sherlock’s arm.

Sherlock laughed quietly. “You need to be specific. That’s a complex area with a lot of subcategories.”

John chuckled too, at the way Sherlock’s voice could make almost any word sound erotic, and then he writhed. He was just trying to get a little pressure where he wanted it most from Sherlock’s teasing hands, but Sherlock wasn’t ready to ride in guns blazing just yet. John thought he probably had just set himself up for a long game by hinting at the potential of more praise to come. Sherlock always wanted more of that, so lucky for him John had a lot to give. He breathed low and deep, closed his eyes and let his hands roam over Sherlock’s biceps and shoulders as he slid his left thigh up and down Sherlock’s hip. “It’s because you’ve had a lot of practice, isn’t it?” John said. “I mean, I bet you’re a natural talent too, you gotta be. But it shows that you’ve worked at it.”

Both a sore spot and a turn-on at once, that was. Might as well open it up and see what was in there. On a long lazy morning naked in each others’ arms, that had to be just about the best possible time.

Still, John felt Sherlock tensing slightly, and his face in the grey dawn had gone less lusty and more guarded. “You’re jealous. You’re very conflicted about the very idea of my sexual history although you know very little about it. You just know that there’s a lot of it.” He laughed quietly. 

“Well,” said John, “You’ve never been real shy about it. In fact, you brag sometimes.”

“I do, do I?” Sherlock said, still chuckling. “Well, I certainly see no reason to be ashamed at least. But . . . as I said . . . you’re conflicted.” He punctuated his words with staccato kisses on John’s nose, and rolled his hips against him, teasing, the head of his cock fitting into the groove of John’s groin, left side, sliding a little where John was beginning to sweat, nudging at the slight roughness and tickle of the curls of hair there. “You hate to think of me with other men. Don’t you? And yet you also like it. You imagine it. I think it arouses you.”

“You know what arouses me?” John said with a little growl, arranging himself so that he could grasp at least one handful of Sherlock’s ass. “You. Just like this. Right now. Naked. With me.”

“Yes, yes, good, John,” Sherlock said in a sing-song tone, mischievously. “Deflecting by stating the obvious, yes, and believe me, if you just want to have sex right now without learning anything more about me,” he pressed his lips to the base of John’s nose, right between his eyes, “we can do that. But. This is a golden opportunity for you to get a glimpse of my past. And I’ll be disappointed if you’re not curious.” He slid his cheek against John’s, sniffing and nuzzling, before his tongue sought out the shell of John’s ear. “I…like…curiosity.”

 _Fuck fuck fuck,_ John thought, trying to control his instinct to writhe. His head surged up towards Sherlock, responding, and then fell back against the pillow as he closed his eyes and felt his mind drifting. What did Sherlock get up to in the big cities that was so scandalous that his brother had to ship him out here to fly-speck-on-the-map, West Virginia? What might Sherlock be missing even now? So many men on the make in New York and DC, and Sherlock used to have the free run of that, years ago, young and beautiful and brilliant. Cut off from the bright lights and the big city, limited to only one man and a damaged one at that . . . 

John didn’t want to want to know. He was afraid he might regret knowing. But God help him, he wanted to hear whatever Sherlock wanted to say. “Tell me a story then,” he said. As he let those words loose, his cock swelled with anticipation.

“Mmm,” Sherlock said as he felt the twitch, a sound encased in a smile. “I’ve already decided which one to tell you now.” He shifted over a little, removing the immediate pressure of his body from John, who quivered as cool air flooded in between them. Languidly, Sherlock stroked his hand up and down the center of John’s chest as he began to speak, lightly rocking his thigh against John’s knee. “This was in New York City, shortly after I left the University of Virginia with my chemistry master’s degree achieved, but without the paper. It was 1967. I wanted to study my own discipline, my science of deduction, in the greatest real-world laboratory in the nation. I left as many of my family . . . advantages behind as possible. I traveled light, and I took a room in the Hotel Chelsea on West 23rd, which had long had a reputation for accommodating bohemian undesirables who tend to die in their rooms without paying rent, as well as people who were drug users, nosy spies, and homosexual hustlers and sometimes all three at the same time - like myself.”

“So you did, then?” John asked. “You really did . . . Um. For money. You . . . you turned tricks.”

“Yes, I thought I established that long ago,” Sherlock said, glancing away for a moment. “You disapprove of course because you’ve been trained to, but it turns you on when you think of it being me in particular. In fact, I expect that right now, you’re briefly entertaining a fantasy of having met me then, without knowing me, and hiring my services. Your erection grew slightly, and then ever so slightly wilted again. So, I think most likely you did a disservice to your own erotic imagination by telling yourself there’s no use in wanting, that I’d have charged rates well out of your league. Just because you come from working-class stock in real life, doesn’t mean you have to adhere to that in your fantasies, John, isn’t that the whole point of fantasy?”

John snarled a little, and then laughed. “Well, it’s a good thing you weren’t being paid for your pillow talk, were you?”

“Oh, that’s what I like to hear, John.” Sherlock grinned. “Did you imagine I was a high-class escort you could never afford? Oh, what’s the fun in that? I could have done that, but I already understood repressed rich people, and they don’t interest me. I worked the docks, and I charged what sailors could pay, because I wanted to fuck sailors.”

Sherlock’s voice landed on the last few words with heavy punctuation.

John’s mind reeled as his cock throbbed. “Sailors only? Or were you available to all of Uncle Sam’s cannon fodder on leave in the big city?”

Sherlock chuckled and curled his hand around John’s cock possessively, but far too lightly to give him any relief. “If you’d made your way to the West Side docks, you could have had me,” he whispered. “I wasn’t picky.”

John swallowed and breathed deep, thinking of the rotten smell of the under equipped field hospitals to calm his lust for a moment. “Tell me a story,” he said. “A true story. I can handle it.”

“Yes, I think you’d have to handle it,” Sherlock said. “None of my old tricks are here so I don’t have to worry about you attacking them. If you have aggressions that need to be taken out on someone, there’s no one here for that but me. And you know I don’t mind taking it, not the way you dish it out, although fair warning I’m in a fighting-back mood today.” He slithered closer to John and nuzzled his neck with bared teeth, fingernails raking John’s chest.

“Let me tell you how it was done,” Sherlock said, his throaty baritone going soft and steady like a storyteller, so close to John’s ear. “It wasn’t like it was in the bars. Definitely not like it was _near_ them, with the following a half-block behind and the glances because flirting had to be discreet, what if you were wrong? So formal, so silly. No. On the docks, you knew you weren’t wrong. Men were only there for one thing. Well, potentially two things. There was always the chance you’d get a trick who _hated_ fags, all the more so because of being one. I was armed, of course. But most of the time, no, it really was refreshingly honest. You had a man with a cock who wanted to use it.”

His voice in John’s ear was deep and seductive, a hint of a hiss on the sibilants and a light touch of a growl on the dirty words. Closing his eyes John could hear the undertones beneath his voice, could hear the lap of the polluted water and the scents of garbage and fish and ship fuel and sweat and come.

“I’ve definitely decided which story I want to tell you,” Sherlock said, nuzzling the softest spot of John’s neck, near the corner of jaw and ear. “One that might surprise you. One of the times I took on two.”

John shivered in his embrace. _One_ of the times Sherlock took on two? Christ. John would never have let Sherlock accept two-on-one odds alone, not on his watch. But John hadn’t been there.

“That was especially risky, of course,” Sherlock said, and John could all but feel his smirk. “Which made it all the more lucrative, and all the more exciting. If you had just one, you could usually get them off quick right there, however they liked it. If you had a dark enough corner. Risk was mitigated if someone else a short distance away was being less careful. What’s that old joke? If a bear is after us, I don’t have to run faster than the bear, I only have to run faster than you? Same worries on the road at the truck stops on the highways - beware the bears, cops love to swing their compensation clubs. If a bear is prowling, I don’t have to be _completely_ discreet, I only have to be more discreet than the one who’s going to be busted.

“But that’s for one. Two is more work. I kept a loose dibs on a hotel room for this. Not in the Chelsea where I actually slept, of course. A place in Hell’s Kitchen where this _was_ the business. Somewhere if I took two men, they might suspect someone would see them if they tried to kill me. A slight deterrent but a valuable one. You know how it is.”

“I don’t know myself, I’ve just been told,” John said, surprised at his own grouchy tone. “I don’t. Why is it so scary out there for … just for sex?” He had strong - but definitely mixed - feelings about imagining Sherlock getting off in all kinds of ways with other men. His feelings about Sherlock putting himself at risk of his life weren’t conflicted at all, on the other hand; he just plain couldn’t stand it.

“You do know, John. You know that killing for fun exists, and that some people think queers are good hunting sport, so please don’t blush and swoon in my arms at the thought,” Sherlock said, laughing. “Paradoxically, I think the fact that the mob owned all these bars made them safer. Even they couldn’t always watch what happened on the piers, and in the meatpacking district, or in the bushes of the parks, or the toilets of the subways. I liked the smell of the sea and the lights on the water, dazzling, as close to fresh air as you’ll find in New York. But I digress. Let me tell you about these two. Definitely their first shore leave. I only fully appreciated how young they were when I watched them nudging each other over who was going to be the first one to talk to me, like they were asking a girl to dance. It wasn’t a big deductive leap to figure out what they most likely really wanted.”

“Which was?” John asked, sliding his hand up Sherlock’s thigh for reassurance.

“They were aspiring boyfriends who’d botched the basic job of fucking, and they needed someone to teach them how. How they managed to spend any time in the Navy without finding lots of takers willing to do the job for free escapes me, but that was only a testament to how clueless they were. And yet . . . They tried so hard to swagger. One at least I deduced had an impressive weapon that wasn’t completely terrified into flaccidity, so he was the better place to start.”

“Did you start in with that lip of yours, Sherlock?” John asked, laughing. “Because you can make a young man cry without even touchin’ him, and I don’t always mean that in a good way.”

Sherlock chuckled, and John felt it against his own chest, the slight tickle of his hair there raising goosebumps. Sherlock’s fingers pinched and rolled John’s right nipple lightly, as if he needed help staying interested. Not hardly. John was already half gone into imagining Sherlock walking up some creaky old whorehouse stairs with two green and shaking farm boys with new-mint sea-legs in tow, all scared and thrilled at the bright lights, and big city, and the saucy tilt of Sherlock’s hips.

“I had boltholes all over the city in those days, and only some of them included beds,” Sherlock said. “I wanted to give these boys a show that wasn’t too much unlike what they probably expected - a dingy room, a little cheap whisky for their courage, and then I had to take it upon myself to show them what’s what. They probably believed that superstition that whores don’t kiss, so I grabbed the shyer one to prove it wrong. He tasted like corn-fed virginity, John. Not the type I’d have sought out for myself.”

“It’s never been a fantasy of yours to…devirginize someone?” John asked, running his hand up and down Sherlock’s thigh, and deciding to not even try to hide the effect that hearing Sherlock calling himself a whore had had on him.

“No, I’m not attracted to ignorance in any realm. I prefer applicants with a good resumé,” Sherlock said, nipping at the top of John’s shoulder, “but he was agreeably pliable at least, and the other boy watching gave it a nice frisson, because he was both aroused and jealous. That was my angle, then, that was what was in it for me. I was going to give his little friend the time of his life, and I was going to savor the delicious conflict. They gave me fake names, Jack and Joe I believe. Didn’t bother to remember who was which. We’ll say Jack was the one who was braver in soliciting but Joe was the one who took it like a duck to water. I let him grab my hair and hump up against me, and when I sat down on the bed, he was on my lap like a panting dog. I held him by the hips to teach him patience, and I wasn’t gentle when I threw him down under me. Jack made a move like he was going to try to fight me, but Joe just gave him this … very expressive look. He liked it. He was going to be very put out if Jack turned it into a bad scene.”

“Expressive like you?” John said, a little breathless now, imagining this kid pinned under Sherlock with his boyfriend watching - was he blond? Was he small? Did he have an accent, was he New York or Midwest or Southern? Was he really a virgin? Had he been with girls? Silly, silly, this wasn’t really about the trick, it was about Sherlock, filthy no-nonsense sex instructor.

“Expressive in a different way,” Sherlock said. “I did say that he didn’t talk much. I tried holding his wrists down to see how he would react, because in this position I could feel any new developments. His pants weren’t leaving much to the imagination. His friend was looking more and more worried at this, and I didn’t want them to think they were in completely over their heads. Only a little bit. So I beckoned Jack over and told him to do what I’d just done. And I was rather stern about it, I have to say. I took Jack’s hand and I put it right on Joe’s cock with my own hand over it and gave it a little stroke, because if he was going to chicken out about that, there was no point in continuing this farce any further.”

John swallowed deeply at the thought of masterful Sherlock ordering those fresh grunts around like a, well, there wasn’t anything military about him in the least, but like a stern teacher with a ruler under his desk and a lack of fear of using it. Sweat prickled in his armpits and the creases of his groin, and he watched Sherlock’s storm-cloud eyes tracking his movements as he slid his own hand down towards his cock. Despite the hotness of Sherlock’s monologue, it had started to shrink a little from lack of attention, and he gave it a lazy pump. It quickly filled back up again when Sherlock swatted John’s hand away, and replaced it with his own. 

“So,“ Sherlock said, giving John slow, loose completely insufficient strokes, with sadistic little twists, “As I was saying. Jack tried to redeem himself by pumping away as if he were back in the cabins trying to get off as quick as possible, going from 0 to 60, and probably poor Joe would have been glad to get that much, but I had some professional pride, and. . .”

“You were saying a lot of this kind of stuff to them, weren’t you?” John said, his laughter softly shaking the bed.

“What do you think, John?”

“I know you,” John said.

“Mmm,” Sherlock replied, breathing heavily in John’s ear and momentarily dropping his fingertips to the base of John’s balls. “I was even worse then.”

“So, ungh, yeah right there, God, I’m even more impressed you’re still alive.”

“The 63rd Street Y had an excellent boxing program as well as highly social locker rooms,” Sherlock said. “I took advantage of _all_ the opportunities.”

“Sherlock, goddamn, you’re gonna be the death of me,” John muttered. “I gotta get to the end of this story. I don’t say this all that often but please, keep talking.” Contrary to his request, he threaded his fingers through Sherlock’s curls and tugged. _Lightly, please, just one kiss before we go on._ Sherlock’s mouth was lush and warm. There was a certain taste it got when he was turned on. John had spent enough time studying it that he could pick out the slightest hint of it building among all the amazing scents and flavors of Sherlock. He licked lightly and circled his fingers around the peaked brownish-rose of Sherlock’s right nipple, tapping and pressing, and that subtle taste got a little bit stronger as Sherlock arched his chest toward his touch. John drew back. “Yeah, so you had him, right, you had Jack’s hand on Joe’s dick or the other way round, it really don’t matter…”

“The hand job was a mere preliminary. I can’t be bothered to teach 20-year-olds what they should have figured out with their own hands when they were 12, gay or not. I just wanted to make sure they were both hard enough to have an investment in not chickening out of the more advanced work. So Angry Jack started to come a little closer when I was stroking Innocent Joe (or maybe it was the other way round), and when he did that, I had him. I held Joe’s hips down again, and started to move down him. Seeing if his nips were sensitive - and they were, John, oh, they were, I barely had to lick them, and he suddenly started sounding religious. Jack was creeping in closer, still watching me. He thought I was fixated on his little friend. I was really watching him.”

“What did his face look like?” John asked, running his nails down Sherlock’s shivering stomach, stopping just short of that line of hair he so loved. “Was he totally into it? I bet he couldn’t take his eyes off you. And off his lover either. He’d go crazy trying to look at both. That’s how I’d feel if I was watching you with someone else. I’d be jealous, sure, but I’d be watching you because I could see you in ways I couldn’t when it’s me doing it to you.”

“You’d hate that, wouldn’t you?” Sherlock said, a little breathless now. “But you’d love it too. How would you feel about the other man? He’d be attractive of course. You’d want him too. But you’d hate him a little, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah,” John said, rutting against Sherlock’s hip in spite of himself. “I would.”

“That’s how Jack looked. He wanted to pull me off Joe, and punch me, I could tell. You know I like that. I didn’t think I was going to get much danger out of these two, and yet he was giving me some. So I just gave him that same look that makes you want to punch me.” He gave John a glimpse of it.

“Oh fuck, Sherlock, I know that look.” John wrapped one leg around Sherlock’s. His hand just above Sherlock’s pubic hair quivered. He wanted to grab Sherlock’s cock. He wanted to grab Sherlock’s throat. But more than any of that, he wanted to hear more of the story. “So then what happened?”

Sherlock looked for a moment like he wanted to keep being smart-assed to John,and then he seemed to catch himself and tamp that instinct down. “Then I met Jack’s eyes for just one moment, let him know that I saw him, and then I took sweet Joe’s big dumb cock, and I licked it. Just the tip. Joe bucked up like he’d had an electric shock. I held him down, and I said to him, all sweet, and soft, and shocked, ‘You act like no one’s ever done this. No, no, don’t say, just let me…’ Just a few words. I liked to use a little sweet talk. And then I sucked him down, all the way. His eyes were closed but mine were open, and I watched Jack’s face as he knelt by the edge of the bed so he could watch up close.”

“How close?” John asked. It suddenly felt really important to know just how much Jack could see. The little glimpse of the insides of Sherlock’s lips when he pulled down the shaft of Joe’s hard, quaking dick, the dark pink hollow of his mouth when he opened it again to go further, the white flash of his sharp little rabbit teeth…

“Close enough to grab my hair, and try to make me do it a different way if little Joe didn’t seem to like what I was doing. Close enough he was on his knees at the edge of the bed, and I could feel his hot breath on my hand where I held his little boyfriend’s hips. Close enough I could see that he was hard as a rock in those tight white sailor pants, and he was going to stain them soon if he didn’t get a chance to get out of them and play. But I didn’t say a word. I was busy.”

He gave John such a luscious leer that John almost broke off Story Hour right then and there to feel that slick decadent mouth around him again, to get his own taste of what little Joe had gotten. Shit, that must have blown the kid’s mind too, to get blown down south by a cocksucking master like Sherlock. He could hear Sherlock chuckle next to him, in reality, moving his body slightly to get the maximum coverage out of John’s deliberately light caresses. John bit his lip to keep from losing it right there as Sherlock moved his hips so as to slide the tip of his cock down the side of John’s thigh, letting him feel that he was hard and hot and wet. “Then what? Then what did you do?” John asked, desperate to bring this tale - and themselves - closer to climax.

“I brought my other hand down to my button and fly while I still kept sucking off little Whatshisname, who wasn’t really little in that department. Nice cock, kind of a plummy bulbous affair at the end. He was very salty, like you’d expect of…seamen.”

“Oh God,” John groaned.

“He made the most amazing noises too. He had the filthy pillow half shoved into his mouth, clearly used to trying to keep it quiet. We were in a flophouse with thin walls, sure, but half the people in the rooms were there for the same thing or else they were too wasted to hear anything. He didn’t have much to worry about. So while I was pumping him slow enough that he wasn’t going to get off just yet no matter how green and horny he was, I was wriggling out of my pants and giving Jealous Jack a nice look at my ass. I got them about down to my knees and spread my legs over little Joe as far as I could and started giving my own cock a little stroking, nowhere near enough to get close, mostly just to show it off.”

“Holy fuck,” John moaned. “How did he not jump your bones right then and there? That’s what I’d have done. Got up on top of you and pushed you down onto him, get you in the middle between us. Would you have liked that, Sherlock?”

“Is that what you’d want to do to me? Oh!” Sherlock’s eyes went wide in his revelation gaze. “You’d want to punish me just a little bit by turning you on so much with someone else. You do like to spank my ass, and this would be the perfect chance.”

“I like the way it jiggles,” John said, his voice a little thickened by the sudden alternating dryness and wetness of his mouth. He was going to literally drool on Sherlock if he didn’t get some relief soon. “Turns pink. You grunt and sometimes you wheeze.”

“But that’s you right now, John, don’t corrupt the narrative,” Sherlock said with a cruel smile, and he struck quick as a snake to grab John’s wrist before he could try it. “Jack there, he wanted to do the same thing, I could read it on him, but he was still all caught up in fucking manners, which is not what you’re supposed to be thinking of when the hustler you’ve hired has his ass in the air and your boyfriend’s cock down his throat. _Honestly,_ John. Most men, when you get them in situations like that, their lower heads turn out smarter than the upper. But in this case, I was dealing with a double-decker moron.”

John couldn’t help but snicker, and that turned into a rippling peal of giggles. “Goddammit, Sherlock, warn a man.”

“Did I ruin the mood?” Sherlock said, smirking like he already knew the answer, which he did.

“Hell no, Sherlock, it takes a lot more than that to ruin the mood with me and you.”

Sherlock nodded and gave John’s erection a long, lush rub with his inner thigh before crawling over John, hovering on hands and knees. “Because your penis, at least, is not stupid. Always points north, like a true compass.”

“Mmm. Points toward you, you mean. Come on now, tell me the rest of the story about your sailor boys. I’m having a nice time picturing this. Did Jack finally figure it out?”

“Not without me telling him. I had to take my mouth off Joe’s hot, pulsing prick to tell him to watch. Get him to bring his face in close. I wanted him to be able to smell us. I told him, ’Now learn. You can’t see everything I’m doing, but you can tell by the effect it has on him. You’ve got to change it up. Slow and savor. Right? Then you have to watch for when he’s about to come too soon, unless you just want to make it quick and get it over with. But don’t complain if you don’t get good quality work when it’s your turn.’

“He just couldn’t stop staring, though. Finally I reached out and took his hand and put it on his comrade’s wet prick, and just told him to hold that thought for a moment. He was stroking, starting to get the hang of it, which is really unforgivable, he should at least have known what to do based on his own. ‘Did you watch real close?’ I asked him, and he nodded. So then I said, ‘prove it,’ and I grabbed his neck and pulled him around to face my own cock bobbing up almost against his nose. ’Show me you paid attention. It’s your friend’s turn to get a show.’ He hemmed and hawed for a moment, but I just shook his head a little and said, ‘open wide,’ like a dentist would, and the next thing I knew he had nearly impaled his face on me.”

John sucked in his breath, imagining that, recalling how masterful and forceful Sherlock could be. “Was he any good?”

“He’d been paying attention. He wasn’t great but he was hot, and tight, and ready, and little Joe was into it, kept reaching out and touching us. He was playing with my hair, playing with Jack’s balls, pinching his own nipples. If I could have talked, I’d have told him some more things I wanted to see him do, but he was more of a natural than I’d thought. He spread his legs wide open, and started playing with his ass too. Good, good. I just had to concentrate on not shooting my own load too soon, but I had better control in those days.”

“Better control? When you were younger?” John asked, surprised, though his older self was starting to feel his own discipline being rather stretched. 

“Better control when not with you,” Sherlock said, in one of those moments of unguarded praise that made John’s chest squeeze and swell.

“Yeah?” John said, recovering. “You were about to shoot your load already? Thought you said this kid wasn’t that good at sucking?”

“He didn’t have finesse, but he had enthusiasm. His eyes were watering. I could reach down and wipe his tears away. Salty. I’d have liked to use him all the way, honestly, but his little friend was non-verbally suggesting he wanted a fuck, and I was thinking that was going to be advanced level. Jack was trying to pretend he wasn’t really a natural born cocksucker, but there he was on his knees devouring me like the second-placer in a hotdog eating contest at Coney Island, and I could see him trying to be coy about where his other hand was.”

“And…?” John asked, both of his hands now in charge of cocks, one his own, one Sherlock’s.

“Downstairs beating his own meat to a bebop rhythm, if I didn’t nip that in the bud.”

“Fuck, I love to hear you talk about sex,” John said breathlessly. “You get so into it, you sound like a Beat poet or something.”

“Snap your fingers and we’re done here,” Sherlock said tartly.

“Yeah, like you’d stop now,” John said. “So go on. He’s sucking you off, and you like it. What does his little friend think of that? You said he wanted to get fucked. Who’s gonna do that for him?”

“KY is a beautiful thing, John,” Sherlock said, panting just a little, and biting his lip as John squeezed his thighs, trying to pull him down for more skin on skin contact. “I always made sure to have some on me, though I didn’t break it out of my pocket until the strategic moment. Remember I’d been watching little Jim . . .”

“Joe,” said John, who was realizing in that moment that Sherlock might have called them all _Johns,_ except when he was in bed with an actual John.

“Whatever,” Sherlock said impatiently. “I’d been watching little Joe with his coy act completely over and gone, fingering himself like a pro without even the benefit of any lubricant at all, all elbow grease, we should say. Going at it like he was trying to get in up to the elbow. So I let Jack get a few more pulls in, now that he was definitely getting better at sucking with my guidance.I hadn’t felt a stray tooth in ages, and then I pulled his head off me and looked him right in the eye and watched him drool, and I said, ‘Your little friend needs a fucking, and I’m going to give him his money’s worth.’

“Jack was giving me a deadly stare as I stroked myself and added a little gel - didn’t take much, I’d been well slobbered up - and Joe looked up at me as I crawled over him, just like I’m doing to you now, John. Still trying to play innocent. It has its charms, but I’m glad you don’t do that.”

John groaned and reached up, his hands sliding up Sherlock’s arms to the back of his neck. “Fuck, Sherlock. I mean, I know this is where that story’s going and I sure as hell want to hear it all the way through but right now, I want you to kiss me so bad, please, will you?”

Sherlock gave a raw sound, and bent down low, cradling John’s head in one of his big hands, kissing John with a rough, whimpering neediness. John moaned in his own chest at the wanton wetness, turning his head this way and that as much as he could to get more of the slick slide of Sherlock’s lips, and the deft feline strokes of his tongue. For long moments they reveled in the taste of each other. Sherlock broke the kiss for a moment, and reached for the glass of water on the nightstand and took a sip - for he’d been talking a long time, and he was going a little dry. When he came back to John’s mouth, he tasted fresh and cool again.

“So you did him, yeah?” John finally asked close up against Sherlock’s lips, squirming. “You put it in him, made his boyfriend watch?”

“Yeah,” Sherlock said, breathlessly. “Thought for a minute about putting a rubber on. I did that sometimes to help me last longer when I was fucking a trick, because it numbs the feeling a lot. Decided not to, because I wanted to come inside him, and let Jack squelch around in that when he took his turn.”

“Jesus, Sherlock,” John said. “You ever think about doing that with me?”

“Doing what? Wearing a rubber to last longer? Or going first and letting someone else have sloppy seconds? I think about doing everything with you, John. _Everything.”_

“Everything,” John moaned, closing his eyes and letting his head thrash against the pillow side to side, cooling his cheeks on the fresh cotton. 

Sherlock braced himself on the mattress and began to move, a slow sexy back-and-forth grind in his hips, foreshadowing the even lewder moves he was going to make next when he’d moved both John and himself into the position he wanted for the climax of his tale. Climaxes, plural. There’d been a lot. God, how much of Sherlock’s come and sweat had been spattered over the sleaziest men’s dives of Manhattan, and why was it so hot to think about how it was now all down here in the mountains, all in this crappy little coal town, and all over John and in him in every possible way. Sherlock’s ridiculous, excessive lust was all his. 

“That’s a lot, Sherlock.” Maybe it wasn’t all his. Maybe _everything_ meant more scenes like this, with others. John’s heart gave a twinge and his cock gave a leap.

Sherlock laughed, low and deep. “It is a lot. And I want all of it, I want everything you can think of and I want things we haven’t even thought of yet. Keep your eyes closed and just feel this, John. I’m going to take you in. I’m going to hold you down and ride you.”

“Fuck,” John moaned, biting his lip, keeping his eyes obediently shut for the sound of Sherlock, and the scent of him. The pressure of skin, and the hiss of breath, and the tickle of hair, and the lingering taste of his musky kiss was almost too much alone. The sight of Sherlock flexing his whole torso, rocking his hips, and slowly lowering himself onto John’s towering cock, that would be overkill. That would have him dead to the world in seconds.

“Once he got his cock inside me, he figured out how to use it,” Sherlock said, his voice going back to matter-of-fact as though he were narrating a nature documentary. “Not with any sort of expertise, but there’s a certain instinct that kicks in. Even though he forgot for a moment where my own cock was, didn’t take him long to remember that every push he gave me, his little boyfriend got. Not that he minded, from the way he was yelling and holding onto me. I hope Joe let him have it with a good table-turn to pay him back for that. Of course, things were going to get interesting for the pair of them back on the ship. I don’t imagine they’ll stop once they got started.”

“From what I’ve heard about the Navy…”

“My business dealings would seem to bear those rumors out,” Sherlock said, but in his voice now there was creeping heat, as though he remembered that he was teasing the head of John’s cock between his plump, muscular cheeks, waiting for just the moment to push down and have John completely at his mercy.

“Seems they wouldn’t need to pay to get their shafts cranked then, would they? Why spend all their money on that onshore when they could get it for free.”

“Ah, but that wasn’t always how it worked, John. The meat-packing districts, West Side, right on the Hudson. Packing beef by day and cock by night. All those grimy little bars, didn’t look like much, but they were all mob-protected. Maybe that Italian stallion in that sharp suit over there, maybe he was a little too quick to watch a trick who seemed to be a little too aware of what was going on behind the scenes,” Sherlock said. “It was safest to play dumb, and that was what the trade liked too. You can imagine that wasn’t always my strong point.”

John blinked for just a moment, his stomach twisting in retroactive fear for Sherlock’s sake. But Sherlock wasn’t going to indulge it.

“Sometimes you’d get the macho men of the Merchant Marine and the like, they absolutely were not queer, no, not them. You’d just happen to find them by coincidence loitering around the gay docks, the gay gyms, the baths, the flophouses with the reputations. They were all straight as arrows, all of them, and they’d tell you so repeatedly while they fucked you enthusiastically. The really butch ones knew exactly what the gay boys like -, to pay them for the privilege of sucking their cocks, imagine. Oh, but it’s not gay if they’re the ones getting sucked, isn’t that right? Or doing the fucking?”

John blinked for a moment as he felt caught in the blazing headlights of Sherlock’s lusty but always perceiving eyes. “Hey, I’ve been a good sport about that,” John grumbled lightly.

“True. Your macho hangups have a wonderful way of crumbling to nothing as soon as you get turned on. Optional in a one-time trick…very important for…something more…repeated.” Sherlock glanced away, squirrelly, and John was going to have to extract a little more clarification on that point.

“Did _you_ ever pay for that…opportunity?” John asked, incredulously.

“On occasion I did, shall we say, rob Peter to pay Paul.”

Oh God. John wouldn’t have thought that would light him up as bright as it did right in the balls, the image of Sherlock on his knees before some burly, tattooed longshoreman, worshiping, a big forceful hand in his hair pumping Sherlock’s head up and down until he shot a big load down Sherlock’s throat, maybe getting it on his face too…and _Sherlock_ being the one who paid, he just loved it that much…

“You really are…” John kneaded the lean cords of Sherlock’s thigh a little desperately, wanting to bring him closer, drive up into him, satisfy the need coursing through him, instead of trying to come up with something to say that was dirty enough and felt more like praising Sherlock’s wantonness. “Insatiable,” was what came out.

“Curious,” Sherlock emphasized. “It was a fairly new field of inquiry to me at the time.”

“You don’t go off half-cocked, do you?” John said, stroking the very full cock.

“Clearly not,” Sherlock said, taking advantage of John’s pause to lunge and grasp his wrists again.

This, this was what he’d been waiting for. John closed his eyes and breathed deep, long and slow, trying to keep from coming out of sheer anticipation. “Fffuck, Sherlock,” he said. “Whatever you’re going to do to me, just . . . God, anything, anything you want, everything, just…give me a moment.”

“Mm,” Sherlock said. “That kiss was spectacular. Something about the filthy foreplay makes a little tongue work even better, and I’ve always been fond of it. But let’s work back up to it. I’m going to tell you to keep your hands right where they are, and don’t even try to touch me until I say so. I want _such_ a kiss, John.”

John moaned quietly and agreed to it, nodding, sliding his hands under the pillow beneath his head to remind himself not to touch. This wasn’t going to be easy. Sherlock looked black, and peach, and silver in the flat pearly overcast light of their bedroom, a glorious flush on his face and chest, a light sheen of sweat, his cock-head red and wet. Everything about him looked so touchable, so edible. But his face had that mixture of sternness and playfulness that made John want to obey, because he was learning that the rewards were always worth it.

Sherlock looked up from under his dark curls as he worked his way down John’s body, and that was always almost too good to bear. Every time he did it, even though he was teasing - his kisses too light, his tongue too dry, his nips and sucks too short and quick and random.

“Now get ready to move quickly, trick,” Sherlock muttered. “Since you seem to think you can handle the advanced level.” 

John had barely had time to process what had been said to him when he found his legs being grasped and lifted, harshly, parted by strong hands that pulled at him coarsely, and he barely strangled his cry when Sherlock suddenly pivoted and buried his face in John’s crotch, and straddled John’s face at the same time. John whimpered at the tickling, velvety lap of Sherlock’s heavy balls against his nose, almost entirely out of reach, as Sherlock held him roughly open and dove for gold.

“Use your hands now,” Sherlock commanded from down below, his voice muffled by the spread and strain of John’s thighs and balls and the damp, desperate skin that felt his hot and humid breath. “Spread my ass and eat me out. But don’t come yet no matter what I do to you.”

“That’s not fair,” John cried.

Sherlock pinched John’s thigh with a flash of shocking pain. “Do you want to learn from me or not? I’m not sending you out on the streets until I know you’re well-trained.”

Oh God. Oh GOD. Just a little turn of phrase, just a couple lines of acting, and John was in another world, imagining himself on the streets beneath the lights, watching men watching him. He hadn’t asked Sherlock to do a role-play scene, they hadn’t talked about that leading in, and yet it was just perfect, wasn’t it? Sherlock’s perfect revenge for that niggling feeling, however slight, that John was judging him for his past, and wanted to fight off his past partners retroactively. John all but heard Sherlock’s smug little chuckle as John’s cock leaked aching drops at the very thought. In his haze, he felt Sherlock’s hand tighten around the base of his cock and balls, firmly but gently, in just that perfect way, to hold back an oncoming climax.

John took a few deep breaths, and then reached up and grasped, letting all his next breaths fill with the tangy musk of Sherlock’s ass, a scent that never failed to suspend all John’s last vestiges of civilization.

“Get me wet,” Sherlock growled down below, and John almost imagined he heard the words traveling through his body, bypassing his ears. “I’m gonna get you wet too but don’t you dare come. Thirty bucks to let me ride you if I like your work.”

Oh. By what he’d been told, that was generous, John thought. He had to do a good job to earn that. He guided Sherlock down a little, and inched up on the pillow to make sure his mouth fitted to Sherlock’s hole comfortably, and then he went to work, slow slides up and down the groove, only gradually making his rounds focus more and more on Sherlock’s flexible little pucker.

Sherlock grunted appreciatively as John felt his glutes flex, and then was derailed in his concentration as Sherlock seemed to inhale John’s cock deep into his throat, completely unfazed by the uncommon angle. John moaned deep into Sherlock’s cleft, and had to press his head back into the pillow to get a rush of air, absolutely dizzy with need.

Sherlock’s hand held him tight at the root. “Control,” was all he said, in a voice deep and thick before he began to suck again, more slowly and deliberately.

Neither of them could talk anymore, if they did their work properly. John pointed his tongue a little stiffly and began to alternate thrusting and lapping. Sherlock expressed his enjoyment with deep vibrating hums around John’s cock, but he wasn’t giving nearly the pressure or speed John needed to come, and for that John was grateful. 

Tricks are all well and good but there’s nothing like a partner who knows your body, John thought. He had to have that advantage at least. Was that really true? Well, yeah, but strangers had their own appeal too, just because they were strangers. They’d talk about that more later. Clearly it wasn’t the time to say anything. His tongue right now was only for opening Sherlock up, teasing him, making his muscles twitch. How would that feel, to lick a total stranger’s asshole? You’d have to trust to the promise that the pros knew how to keep clean.

 _Fuck._ That thought shouldn’t be as hot as it was.

 _Thirty bucks to let me ride you,_ Sherlock had said.

John dared to reach up and pull Sherlock’s ass up around his sucking mouth, letting his drool trail down Sherlock’s crack to his balls. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Sherlock’s hand flailing, reaching for . . . 

Oh.

Sherlock gave a couple last, long gulping sucks around John’s cock before his other hand braced himself on the mattress, and he pivoted again, hoisting his hips away from John, out of his grip, turning.

The tube of KY was in his hand. It was one John hadn’t seen in all the months they’d been fucking. It was old and cracked and leaking, curled up around the head and barely any left, and the sight of it drove John mad. Was this one of the very ones that had been in Sherlock’s pocket as he worked the West Side docks, and the mob-run bars of Times Square?

John struggled to keep it together as Sherlock straddled him and leaned over him. He bit his lip as Sherlock warmed the last of the gel from that ancient tube in his hand, and slid some down over John’s cock, making him buck up with the shock of the sudden cold.

Sherlock smirked, low and deep, as he scooped up a little excess from his fingers, and took a moment with - John had to imagine- long fingers probing his own hole. John couldn’t actually see, his eyes were filled with Sherlock’s erect cock bouncing slightly in front of him with each rise of Sherlock’s breath, and each little pulse of his hand. The velvety layer of his foreskin had peeled back to coat his shaft, and the head was slick and exposed.

“John,” Sherlock said.

“Oh God,” said John. Sherlock laughed softly.

And then he lunged. With a snap of his hips and a grip of his thighs, Sherlock held John completely in his power from the waist down. With a slow, lewd wriggle, he arranged himself, just once using his hand to place John’s aching length in the precise position. As he sank down, he grasped John’s wrists and pinned them back against the pillow one more time. “I like the way you look, like that,” Sherlock said. “Under me. I like the way holding your arms down makes your chest stretch out. I like the way the only part of you that can really move is your hips and your legs.” Sherlock’s thighs tightened and loosened around John’s hips as though he were guiding a horse.

John was held, and engulfed, and surrounded. The slick constriction of Sherlock’s body around his cock, taking him in incrementally, was dazzling - tight, hot, drawing his whole consciousness down into it, so intense that although he loved nothing more than watching Sherlock in these moments. He had to close his eyes as a moan broke from his throat.

Then Sherlock began to move. The first roll of Sherlock’s hips, forward and back, was small and tight, making sure John’s cock breached him slowly, piercing into him long and deep. John could feel every inch of the slide down, and then up again, deliberate and controlled. Pinned like a moth on a board, John watched Sherlock’s abs flex, and looked up to his face, hooded by his shaggy hair, shadowed in the rain-grey light. Only by the glimpse of his white teeth could John tell he was smiling, gasping, close to overwhelmed.

John imagined that his pulse had left his heart and migrated to his cock, because that was how he could feel Sherlock’s life most directly, right there in that tight passage that constricted and loosened, hot and slick. Sherlock was right about the way John’s body behaved for his delectation. John’s chest arched up, his belly tightened, his legs flailed and his bare feet slid helplessly on the worn, cool sheets as he tried to get some leverage while Sherlock just held him down, as still as possible, using John like a toy. Or so it seemed. Or so John liked to think.

For long, rolling moments that was how they played, Sherlock doing all the work with the muscles of his thighs, and spine as he leaned into the mattress where he braced John’s hands. John tried to thrust up deep in counterpoint. Sherlock met his eyes, and _flexed_ inside, and John groaned.

“Sherlock,” he said finally, fully ready to beg. “Please. Let my hands go. I want to touch you.”

“In due time,” Sherlock said, nearly unaffected but for his heavy breathing, and the husky little rasp to his voice. He moved his hips in slow circles, gripping John deep inside. “You feel so good, John. So big. So patient for me.”

“Well, you ain’t making me feel like the meter’s running,” John managed to gasp, and then giggled, every twitch of his laughing body sending little ripples of movement up into Sherlock. “Who’s the one supposed to be paying again? I forgot.”

“I think the idea was that I was paying you for your rough-trade redneck soldier cock, and believe me, John, it would be worth every penny if I did,” Sherlock said, picking up speed. “Or maybe you think you should fuck me into oblivion, and leave a twenty on the nightstand?”

“I don’t even know who’s fucking who anymore,” John said, his wrists twisting in Sherlock’s grasp. Sherlock was putting some weight on them. “Let me touch you. Please. Let me stroke your cock, and make you come all over me. Let me grab your ass and hold you tight while we fuck. Please.”

“Mmm yes,” Sherlock moaned, dripping a little sweat onto John’s forehead as he released John’s hands and slumped forward with his hands on the pillow, his upper chest over John’s face. John grasped Sherlock’s hips, hard, and held him tight for a barrage of bouncing thrusts just to relieve some pressure. His hands moved up Sherlock’s sides, sliding in sweat, meeting over his lower back, pulling Sherlock down so that his cock slid in the sweat on John’s belly. Sherlock groaned, and bent his back so that his forehead brushed John’s. John could barely taste his mouth at this angle, but he stretched his neck up to get as much of it as he could, Sherlock’s tongue brushing his lips, the salty tang of sweat on his chin. One of Sherlock’s hands gripped his neck for a moment, bending him up sharply for a brief, harsh full kiss. John moaned into it and slid one of his hands between their bodies to play with the head of Sherlock’s wet cock, sliding its sheath of skin back and forth.

“Do you want to make me come like this?” Sherlock panted. “Before you, even?”

“Yeah,” John said. “Yeah, I wanna hear the sounds you make. I wanna feel it on me. You gotta hurry if you want to beat me to it though. I’m close. You’re so tight. How can you still be so tight after all the cock you’ve had in you?”

“Like all muscles, it’s stronger with exercise, John,” Sherlock gasped.

“Humor me,” John said, a smile breaking his mask once again. “I should get a discount for a fuckin’ literal-minded whore.”

“I’m paying you, remember? Jack me off,” Sherlock barked, trying hard not to laugh. “You’re going to love the way it feels when I come with you in me.”

“Aw yeah,” John said, his hand speeding up.

“Order me to come . . . and I will . . . “ Sherlock said, trembling, his teeth gritting.

“Yeah, just like that, just like that, faster . . . shake that ass . . . Now, boy, _now!”_

Sherlock made a shockingly broken sound as his muscles locked and he trembled, his buttocks and thighs clenching around John convulsively as his cock jumped and shot white wet threads nearly up to John’s chin. The look of him, the way he bucked, and shook, and clenched, and tightened inside, the scent of his come and sweat, the ecstasy of his beautiful face . . . too much. Too much. John growled and took Sherlock’s firm peach of an ass in his hands, rocking him back and forth on John’s cock until the friction built to its peak, and then devilish, treacherous Sherlock took all his own weight on his knees, and pinched John’s nipples.

John’s vision went white, and then red, and then black as he came, his body rocking helplessly, delirious half-words streaming out of his mouth.

When John sank from the peak, Sherlock’s hips still rocked him, the motion becoming slow and lazy, bringing the rhythm down like a concertmaster. John gave a happy, relieved moan, spreading out his arms, and arching his back to stretch his orgasm-strained muscles, letting the mountain breeze from the open windows cool his sweaty skin. 

He brought up his hands up again to caress Sherlock, knees to thighs to waist to chest. Sherlock’s softening cock trailed wetly on his belly. Sherlock’s hand ran slowly down the side of John’s face, cupping his neck, leaning down for a kiss as he gingerly lifted his gorgeous rump to let John cradle its curves as his cock slipped out.

“Did you kiss them after?” John asked.

“Yes,” Sherlock whispered. “But quickly. Not like this. I know you like to _feel special,_ as if the fact that I’ve been with you for months is somehow not evidence enough. Does this help?” He bent down again, and the kiss they shared was long, and slow, and deep. Sherlock shimmied his legs straight so he could lie atop John completely, resting a little weight on his elbows to frame John’s face as their mouths danced together.

“Sailors?” John finally asked, between little sipping brushes of their lips. “In particular?”

“I liked a nautical theme,” Sherlock said. “I used to love to play pirates when I was little. Something about an anchor tattoo gets me going. But theirs were too brand-new.”

“Hmm,” John said. “You ever play pirates in a grown-up way?”

“Once,” Sherlock said a little wistfully. “Wouldn’t mind doing it again.”

“I’ll file that away,” John said, grinning. “I’m always up to plunder a little booty. That’s . . . I want to do things to you that none of them ever did.”

“They never brought me coffee in bed,” Sherlock said, stretching away from John for a moment and then curling back up against him like a great lazy cat.

“Was that a hint?”

“It barely qualifies as one,” Sherlock said, closing his eyes as he chuckled. The rain beat upon the tin roof with increased vengeance. The light in the windows had grown to a steely gray, and John imagined he heard waves lapping lewdly at the docks far away.


End file.
